20261103 Tuesday, November 3, 2026; Santiago de Compostela
The Viking-included excursion for this extension was a 2-hour walking tour which took us back to the center of the old town and through the Cathedral.
The weather has turned cooler, dropping into the upper 40s at night and rising to the mid-60s during the day. We have been very fortunate regarding the weather as Mariola says it usually starts raining in November and doesn’t stop until April. The 10-day forecast shows rain starting Friday and continuing through the remainder of the 10-day forecast.
It turns out the problem with our room’s air conditioning is that the air conditioning for the entire hotel is shut down in October, so we had to rely on opening the window and door to get our room cool enough to sleep. The privacy bolt with a rolled-up towel kept the door open enough for cool air from the hallway to blow the hot air in our room out the window. Fortunately, this time of year, there’s usually no problem with mosquitoes, and we were not bothered by any last night.
The hotel’s breakfast was just OK. Their version of bacon is cut thin and shaped like American bacon, but has the texture of magazine stock— very chewy and hard to eat. They did have some cubes of almond cake, which is a regional specialty. The hotel has them on sale for €23 for a 6” diameter cake. It is good, tasting like marzipan but with the texture of a moist coffee cake. The hotel relies on Nespresso disks to make coffee, although there is also a drip coffee maker carafe nearby. Unfortunately, there was no automated espresso drink maker like the ship or other hotels had at their breakfast buffets.
In addition to being cooler, there seems to be more wind today, so an extra layer would have been nice. Our walk to the Cathedral took a different route so that we could get a better view of the Cathedral from a park nearby. This park is at the top of the same hill that the Cathedral sits on, so we did have to climb a bit initially to get up to the park. There was an enormous eucalyptus tree on the edge of the park with the best view of the cathedral and city center. There is a dense oak forest in the park as well.
Since the park was at the top of the hill, we ended up approaching the Cathedral from a different direction along a fairly flat elevation. There are quite a few art sculptures along the path in the park.
There was a colorful statue of two petite women at the edge of the park. This painted bronze statue memorializes a pair of sisters (Maruxa (María de la Asunción) and Coralia (María Coralia) Fandiño Ricart - Two Marias) who walked through the Alameda park every day at 2 p.m. in colorful hand-stitched fashions.
Their brothers were forced into exile for opposing the fascist Franco regime. The sisters faced persecution and abuse because of their brothers’ liberal activities, but they became local icons of the city from the 50s to 70s. They passed away in the 1980s.
We are at the very tail end of the pilgrimage season, and while there are a lot of people in trekking gear, and some porters lugging huge piles of backpacks around the city, the square in front of the cathedral was sparcely populated. In the summer, at the height of pilgrimage season, it can nearly be standing room only in the square.
The Cathedral has evolved over the ages, having gone from a utilitarian Romanesque style to having later Baroque and Gothic elements added over the years. What had stood as the cathedral in medieval times was off to the right of today’s main cathedral, shrouded in scaffolds and tarps. It is undergoing restoration in preparation for a big celebration in 2027. The added Baroque style elements usually emphasize symmetry and perfection, but the pediment at the top of one corner pillar seems to be malrotated several degrees.
Left corner Baroque oopsie.
A statue of St James (Santiago) stands at the center of the Baroque facade, flanked by two of his disciples.
The main entrance to the cathedral is actually through a side gate that is currently also undergoing restoration, so we entered from another entrance covered in tarps and scaffolding between the old and newer parts of the cathedral. The oldest tower, which is the one shrouded in tarps and scaffolding, is a clock tower. The two towers of the main newer cathedral are bell towers.
There are other towers that seem a bit out of place in the complex that have a unique square stepped shape which may have been influenced by Aztec and Mayan architecture from the Americas.
Aztec or Mayan vs Baroque
Our tour inside the cathedral started at the back of the Cloister where the public bathrooms are located (of course). There is what appears to be a set of spare bells sitting in the vast courtyard.
The next two stops in our tour did not allow photography. These were the library and museum. The library contained ancient bound volumes, most of which were handwritten, and many in giant font sizes that would allow an entire choir to read them from a distance. We learned that the pyramid-shaped structures we have seen in other cathedrals are just fancy book stands for these giant volumes.
There were also a pair of silver incense burners (Botafumeiro) nearly 2 meters high. One of these is hung from the center of the cathedral and swung in a 65m arc, reaching speeds of 68 kph and heights of 21m. When filled with charcoal and incense, they weigh 80kg. Legend has it that on July 25, 1499, Santiago’s Day Mass, the rope broke mid-swing while Catherine of Aragon was present, sending it crashing out the window. Well, myth busters dug a bit deeper into the legend and found that it just smashed into the south door, and not out through the rose window. Still, videos of the swinging Botafumeiro are insane.
Why did they send this 80kg smoldering orb flying through a crowded cathedral at 68kph? Word has it that if you fill a cathedral of that size with thousands of pilgrims who have just trekked over 100km without a bath, there was a great need for a great deal of incense to cloak the smell of body odor.
There are all manner of gold and silver ecclesiastical accoutrements used in ceremonies in the cathedral museum, another area that forbids photography. A centerpiece of this collection is the jewel-encrusted silver cape that the statue of St. James used to wear at the center of the Cathedral. This statue sits above the tomb containing his remains, and it is customary that pilgrims are allowed to walk behind this statue to give St. James a hug from behind. However, when the church began noticing bits of the silver and jewels disappearing from the cloak, it was put into safe storage while an imitation was left out to face the public.
Courtesy Museu Santiago de Compostela website
There is also a chapel filled with holy reliquaries attached to the museum. These reliquaries boost the spiritual power of the Cathedral like the ultimate collection of power-ups.
The Cathedral itself is huge and a mixture of styles blending Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque periods in various portions of the structure.
The central altar featuring a statue of St. James wearing the gem-encrusted silver cape in closed within a box at a distance looks a bit like the Zoltar fortune-telling machine from the movie Big, but if you watch closely, you can see people moving around behind the statue. At first, we thought these might be artists working on restorations for the big upcoming 2027 celebration, but in fact, anyone can give St. James a hug.
We were taken first on a tour under the central altar into the crypt where a massive silver reliquary contains the remains of Santiago.
Then we emerged from the opposite side of the crypt and climbed a steep staircase to end up directly behind the statue, which is life-sized. No photos are allowed in this area, but there is a pedestal behind the statue that allows pilgrims to step up and put their arms around the statue’s shoulders.
An enterprising pair could arrange for one to stand at the ready at the end of the cathedral with a telephoto lens while the other peered over the statue’s shoulder for a selfie with the Saint. But that wasn’t to be us today.
While we were visiting, there was a professional film crew shooting footage for some sort of program. This caused a bit of congestion in places, but the crew did move quickly and efficiently, getting what they needed with minimal takes. This wasn’t some Tom Cruise shooting with motorcycles blasting through the cathedral, but it might have had him swinging from a flaming Botafumeiro.
These are sold from a tiny window at the back door of the convent where you have to ring a bell and a nun slides open a tiny wooden window. You place your order and she disappears for a moment, then reappears with your order in a plastic bag and a credit card reader in hand.
It was a little like ordering takeout from Harold’s Chicken Shack in Chicago where your order gets taken through a bullet proof glass partition and your order appears on the bullet proof turntable. Gotta protect those nuns’ virtue. But it was kind of ironic to see this tiny nun in this medieval nunnery holding a tap to pay credit card terminal.
We wandered down to the office where pilgrims are given their certificates of completion, but there was some serious security and no one without the requisite stamps of proof was allowed to even peer inside the office. But it looked like any other administrative facility like a post office from what we could tell.
Not pilgrims.
Bagpipers welcome pilgrims to Cathedral Square
We headed back to the hotel and got in a nap. Tomorrow, we will have to have our luggage out by 5 a.m., and head to the airport in Vigo by 5:30 a.m.
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